Let's Talk About American History

Random Acts of Genocide

Murdering the Real Americans

In 1607 the British arrived in Jamestown and, shortly thereafter, began the calculated extermination of the indigenous population. By 1890 an estimated 90,000,000 people, in North, Central and South America had been systematically slaughtered in the fulfillment of Manifest Destiny.

The overt genocide in North America was curtailed after the infamous massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890.

"I did not know how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream..."

- Black Elk

Oglala Holy Man on the aftermath of the Massacre at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, December, 1890 where the United States Army Seventh Cavalry used Gatling guns to slaughter 300 helpless Lakota children, men and women.

Although efforts to exterminate all but the chosen few have continued, they have become much more clandestine.

"Lee Brightman, United Native Americans President, estimates that of the Native population of 800,000 (in the US), as many as 42% of the women of childbearing age and 10% of the men...have been sterilized... The first official inquiry into the sterilization of Native women...by Dr. Connie Uri...reported that 25,000 Indian women had been permanently sterilized within Indian Health Services facilities alone through 1975...

No one actually knows how many native women were sterilized during the seventies. You may rest assured that the eugenics movement, although out of sight, is not out of all minds.

God Bless America?

Slaughter in the Philippines

The United States went to war with Spain in the Philippines in 1898. The war was won very quickly with the help of the Filipino nationalist rebels. The U.S. assured the Filipinos that their independence would be restored once the Spanish were defeated. The U.S. lied.

The Filipinos revolted against their new American rulers in 1899. The fighting lasted three years, killing an estimated 300,000 civilians.

Admiral Dewey, steaming up the Pasig River, lobbed 500lb shells into the Filipino trenches. The U.S. firepower was overwhelming. The corpses of the Filipinos were piled so high that the u.s. soldiers used them as bulwarks. That was the first battle.

From A Peoples History of the United States:

A British witness said: "This is not war; it is simply massacre and murderous butchery."

In Manila, one Major Littletown Waller inquired of a General Smith as to what age limit should be set for killing. General Smith told him, "Everything over ten".

Mark Twain had the following to say regarding this adventure in terrorism:

"We have pacified some thousands of the islanders and buried them; destroyed their fields; burned their villages, and turned their widows and orphans out-of-doors; furnished heartbreak by exile to some dozens of disagreeable patriots; subjugated the remaining ten millions by Benevolent Assimilation, which is the pious new name of the musket; we have acquired property in the three hundred concubines and other slaves of our business partner, the Sultan of Sulu, and hoisted our protecting flag over that swag.

"And so, by these Providences of God - and the phrase is the government's, not mine - we are a World Power."

With Liberty and Justice for All?

Chiquita Banana Republic?

Jacobo Arbenz became the democratically elected president of Guatemala in 1951, winning 65% of the vote. In 1952 Arbenz announced an Agrarian Reform Program which threatened to nationalize the United Fruit Company (Chiquita Banana). Faced with the reforms of a socialist democracy, the corporation sought American intervention.

The democratically elected, progressive government of Guatemala was overthrown in 1954 by a CIA-organized and funded coup. The pretense for this assault on democracy was the alleged, ubiquitous threat of Soviet takeover when, in fact, Russia had no interest in the country. They did not even maintain diplomatic relations.

This act of U.S. terrorism resulted in one of the most inhumane chapters of the 20^th century. A forty year reign of terror ensued, eight years of which was supported by the Reagan administration. This was a period of torture, military-government death squads, mass executions, disappearances and inconceivable cruelty resulting in the extermination of at least 200,000 civilians.

In 1982 Reagan went to visit General Efrain Rios Montt, possibly the worst of the military dictators, who had slaughtered the Guatemalan Indians and peasants indiscriminately. Montts' actions had won him global condemnation. After meeting with the butcher, Regan stated that the general was getting "a bad deal".

Sweet Land of Liberty?

Ronnie Strikes Again!

In Nicaragua, the proxy army of Ronald Reagan, AKA the Contras, was formed from the vicious National Guard of Somoza, a mercilessly repressive, u.s. friendly dictator.

From 1981-1989 the Contras waged all-out war, on behalf of Washington, against the Sandinistas. Their goal was to destroy progressive government social and economic programs.

The civilian death toll was well over 13,000.

John Stockwell, 13-year veteran of the CIA and former U.S. Marine Corps major, had this to say about the American method of "spreading democracy".

"They go into villages. They haul out families. With the children forced to watch, they castrate the father. They peel the skin off his face. They put a grenade in his mouth, and pull the pin. With the children forced to watch, they gang-rape the mother, and slash her breasts off. And sometimes, for variety, they make the parents watch while they do these things to the children."

"These are the activities done by the Contras. The Contras are the people President Reagan called ‘freedom fighters.' He said: ‘they are the moral equivalent of our founding fathers'."

One Nation Under God?

Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge

Cambodian ruler, Prince Sihanouk was not held in favor by Washington. America attempted for many years to orchestrate his demise. Acts of u.s. hostility included assassination plots and the carpet bombing implemented secretly by Nixon/Kissinger in 1969-70.

Finally, in March of 1970, his reign was ended by a group of anti-communist Cambodian officials. Sihanouk was out of the country at the time.

This opened the door for Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. Within five years they had taken power, with the blessing of Uncle Sam.

From an article by Australian journalist John Pilger:

"The US not only helped to create conditions that brought Cambodia's Khmer Rouge to power in 1975, but actively supported the genocidal force, politically and financially. By January 1980, the US was secretly funding Pol Pot's exiled forces on the Thai border. The extent of this support -- $85 million from 1980-86 -- was revealed 6 years later in correspondence between congressional lawyer Jonathan Winer, then counsel to Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation."

The Khmer Rouge turned the population of Cambodia into a pool of slave labor. All institutions were banned; banks, stores, schools, hospitals, even religion and family. Twelve to fourteen hour work days, every day, were forced upon the people. They were fed one bowl of hot water per day, with a few grains of rice thrown in so it could be called soup. Families were separated and children forced to become laborers or soldiers.

The indiscriminate slaughter of babies, children, men, women and the elderly was an everyday occurrence. No particular reason was required to warrant death. People were killed because they happened to be educated, didn't work hard enough, if they came from the wrong ethnic group or for protesting when family members were taken to be executed.

Our friends the Khmer Rouge killed people just because they wanted to.

Furthermore, the U.S. bombing of Cambodia during 1970-75 killed as many or more Cambodians as Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge.

At least 2,000,000 civilians were slaughtered.

"And, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make".

The Beatles / Paul McCartney, "The End", Abbey Road, 1969